You, me, and everyone we know were born on the Titanic.

Some are warning of icebergs. Some are shoveling coal into the furnaces. Some are jamming out while the band plays louder than ever.

In this special episode beginning Year Four of Human Nature Odyssey, Alex gathers friends together in a living room for a live-recorded podcast potluck conversation exploring civilization, collapse, climate change, community, and the strange experience of trying to live a meaningful life while the world feels increasingly unstable.

Drawing from Lord of the Rings, the Titanic, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, ecological philosophy, and the first three years of Human Nature Odyssey, this episode becomes both a reflection on the journey so far and an exploration on what it means to "come home" to the living world.

Come join us in the living room. There's still space on the couch.

CITATIONS

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Substack for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.

For full episode transcripts and additional context, visit:
resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast

Music: Celestial Soda Pop

By: Ray Lynch

From the album: Deep Breakfast

Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI

All rights reserved.

Today Hajar Tazi joins us on our odyssey. Hajar is a poet, writer, facilitator, and self-described "ecosystem weaver." Our conversation is part of a new five-episode miniseries from Resilience that I'm hosting in collaboration with the Omega Resilience Awards.

It's called In the Rising Tide and it brings together conversations with five people from around the world, exploring the interconnected unfolding crises of our time—and how each of them is responding within their own communities. Across the series, I speak with a chef and farmer from the Philippines, an Indigenous water defender in Chile, a young organizer in Uganda resisting mega oil projects, and a narrative practitioner in India.

I wanted to include this conversation with Hajar here on Human Nature Odyssey because it touches many of the themes we've been exploring here on the podcast. Hajar has been deeply influenced by the scholar and activist Joanna Macy, and facilitates something called the "Great Weaving Game," which draws on Macy's framework of the Great Unraveling and the Great Turning to help people imagine new possibilities for the future.

If you want to learn more about Joanna Macy's work, you can check out the recent Human Nature Odyssey episode with Jess Serrante.

Today, Hajar and I explore many things: neurodivergence, eco-villages, the IMF and World Bank, surfing, political polarization, and the art of coming home.

In The Rising Tide was made with support from a grant from Omega Resilience Awards, a project of the nonprofit Commonweal. Find out more at ORAwards.org

You can learn more from Hajar at her substack Remembering the Future.

If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.

Okay, it's been fifty years since the sudden collapse of civilization - why isn't everything back up and running already? In the 1949 sci-fi novel Earth Abides, Isherwood Williams tries and tries to teach the next generation about law, economics, and geometry but these dang kids would rather explore the streams that flow over abandoned boulevards and overgrown shopping malls.

In Part 2 of this two-part series, Alex and astrophysicist Tom Murphy explore the unexpected evolution of life after the fall—when civilization fades into myth, and a new way of seeing the world begins to take root.

It's been decades since airplanes filled the skies, since stadiums roared with crowds, since global supply chains stitched continents together.

The children born after the Great Disaster have never known that world. To them, skyscrapers wrapped in vines are normal. Mountain lions at the edge of the cul-de-sac are normal. The quiet is normal.

And as they grow up, they begin to tell different stories.

Stories not of dominance, progress, or control—but of relationship, mystery, and a living world they are part of, not apart from.

You don't need to have read the book to enter this world—this episode is an experience in itself.

This episode is for listeners interested in societal collapse, critiques of progress, and the big questions about the future of humanity on planet earth.

CITATIONS

• Earth Abides [book]] by George R. Stewart (2026)

• Tom Murphy's Do The Math blog

If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.

For full episode transcripts and additional context, visit:
resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast

Music: Celestial Soda Pop

By: Ray Lynch

From the album: Deep Breakfast

Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI

All rights reserved.